1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus that estimates a contact state between different objects on the basis of information on a surface shape of each of the different objects, and relates to an apparatus that generates a position/posture trajectory representing a position and a posture of an object in a times series manner on the basis of a result of the estimation.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to control the posture of a legged mobile robot walking on a bumpy face stably, a method has been proposed of calculating the grounding degree of a foot rear face of the robot with the ground at each of different positions of the foot rear face on the basis of output values of distance sensors provided at the different positions (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-107032).
The grounding degree is defined as “0” or a positive small values when a foot (precisely, a rear face of the foot) is not in contact with the ground, and is defined as “1” when the foot is in a sufficient contact with the ground. In a state between them, the grounding degree is defined so as to continuously change between 0 or the small value ε and 1.